Getting “Mossed”

Kate Moss covers the new issue of Vanity Fair. I’ve been obsessed with Kate Moss for a long, long time. Some would say this is wrong. That’s she’s the wrong sort to be obsessed with. I get it. But the word “icon” is tossed around too often now. It’s tossed around too often for models. Like, Irina Shayk is hot... but she’s not a model icon. Please. Kate Moss? Definitely. Pop culturally Kate Moss made a statement, on and off the runway. And besides, she’s crazy and f-cked up. I mean, these are the stories, you know?

Kate rarely gives interviews. So many people in this business need to be heard and everyone overshares on Twitter, but Kate has never been interested in speaking publicly. She’s speaking publicly now, in print, because she’s selling a book, a collection of her best modelling shots over the years. And Vanity Fair is a good choice for someone who doesn’t do this so often -- quality pictures (an environment she knows), dishy enough, but over and above the standard of a weekly. It’s a smart strategy.

So what does she say, Kate Moss, when she’s actually willing to talk?

Most people will highlight her brief mention of Johnny Depp and their relationship. When it was over she cried. Fine. You can read about it in the link. My favourite part of the article is when she talks about getting “Mossed”:

Moss describes a phenomenon known to her friends as “getting Mossed”: “People that don’t know me get Mossed. It means, I was gonna go home, but then I just got led astray. In the best possible way, of course. I mean, it’s always fun, and a good time.” Her friend Jess Hallett counters, “It can be a nightmare if you’re the only one there. ‘Please can we go home?’ ‘No.’” On one such night in South Africa, “I remember phoning downstairs,” says Hallett, “and saying, ‘Can we have an alarm call for seven ᴀ.ᴍ., please?’ They said, ‘That’s in five minutes, madam.’ And we had to wait for this jet, in this hangar in South Africa, in this awful heat. We hadn’t been to sleep. We were literally lying with our faces on the concrete, trying to keep cool.”

It’s true. Kate is the girl who can’t go home. It’s never 1 party, it’s 10 parties. It’s never a weekend, it’s an entire month. She lived that way for years, in the 90s, before TMZ. God I want someone to write that book.

As for her career - Kate reveals that she had a hard time posing nude, that she felt pressured, that they threatened her if she didn’t by saying she’d never book another job. The dangerous part of this story is that she did it, obviously, and went on to an incredibly successful career. This is not the lesson we want girls to learn. But there it is, as told by one of the most recognisable faces in the industry, while she’s POSING NUDE (on three different pages in this spread), yet again, still, over 20 years later. And I had a hand in it, didn’t I? We did. In rewarding her for compromising herself as a teenager, we had a hand in it then, and we have a hand in it now.

Click here to read the full excerpt at Vanity Fair. The magazine goes on stands next week. I LOVE the collage pages. Collage pages are so underrated.